


A Different Route

by pigeonanarchy



Series: i believe in kindness [5]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, hes just vibing, i guess, its people escaping the End, no beta we all die inevitably, oliver banks shows up for a bit, theres a lot of thought about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonanarchy/pseuds/pigeonanarchy
Summary: She can feel her end looming over her, every movement a step closer, and she tries desperately to wrap everything up. Honestly, she hadn’t meant to start this many projects, hadn’t meant to create such a problem for herself, but she’d spent a couple of weeks trying to ignore the inevitable and hoping it would go away. She hadn’t even succeeded, and instead had spent the entire time painfully aware of how many new strands of her life she was going to have to tie off. And here she is, a couple weeks down the path towards her death, cursing herself for getting in this situation, where the time she has left might not be enough.
Series: i believe in kindness [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770628
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	A Different Route

**Author's Note:**

> cw suicidal thinking

What if this is what kills her? She can’t die yet, she would be leaving too much undone!

Jana smothers another cough in her throat, her mind already playing out her inevitable, looming end. She knows, intellectually, that the odds of her symptoms stemming from something fatal are low, but low isn’t zero. Her plans to go out with friends next week, if her lungs are giving out, won’t work. She’d hate for them to have to think about what could have been in the event that she’s dealing with a health crisis, or already dead, so she’ll tell them now that she’s busy. That way, when things fall apart, they’ll have something good that won’t be tainted by sorrow.

When she calls and says that she’ll be busy when they’d planned to meet up, they’re disappointed, but they understand. They’re all college students too, and they understand how busy she can be. Besides, it isn’t new for Jana to be too busy. She’d feel bad, thinking about all the potential meetups she’s missed and plans she’s backed out of, but she knows in the long run, it’ll be for the best. Maybe being there would have made her slightly happier, but when she dies, she doesn’t want to leave any loose threads.

The coursework she said she’d be doing, she doesn’t need to do, because she won’t be alive long enough for her grades to count. It had always been difficult to motivate herself to try to keep up with her classes, knowing that she probably wouldn’t live long enough for it to really matter, and with her death guaranteed at this point, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about that.

Her oncoming death was honestly a bit of a relief, as much as it terrified her. The absolute ending of death would cut her off from her ability to do anything more, but it would free her from needing to start anything. It was a pleasant image, in a way, to imagine. A clean ending, her life neatly wrapped up. The problem is, though, that nothing is wrapped up. Jana has art projects on her desk in various states of concept art, sketch, and partial color.

None of that is how she wants to be remembered. She wants to leave behind something worth leaving behind, something beautiful. The first piece she picks up is a still life, partially painted. She’d gotten bored trying to make the shadows work, but that’s not how she wants to be seen – as someone who quit partway through. It won’t be as pretty as she’d hoped, with how much else she has to get done, but at least it will be done.

A couple of projects she scraps entirely, knowing that there’s no way she’ll be able to finish them anywhere near her standards in the time she has remaining, and not wanting anyone to see them as remnants of what could have been.

She can feel her end looming over her, every movement a step closer, and she tries desperately to wrap everything up. Honestly, she hadn’t meant to start this many projects, hadn’t meant to create such a problem for herself, but she’d spent a couple of weeks trying to ignore the inevitable and hoping it would go away. She hadn’t even succeeded, and instead had spent the entire time painfully aware of how many new strands of her life she was going to have to tie off. And here she is, a couple weeks down the path towards her death, cursing herself for getting in this situation, where the time she has left might not be enough.

If she had more time, she’d be able to let go, she thinks. It wouldn’t be so hard, if only she could guarantee the end of her life to be a nice, clean ending, and not the years of grief and pain following her father’s death. He hadn’t seen his death coming. He hadn’t been prepared. He’d left _so much,_ and she would not do the same to those around her. At least, she hoped she wouldn’t do the same.

Her hand shakes as she picks up the next work, intending to decide how best to finish it. The pile was so much smaller than it had started. When she’s done, what would there be for her to do? Just wait to die? Her breath catches in her chest as she fights to keep from crying. She doesn’t _want_ to die at all, and there isn’t _anything_ she can do about it. While she was finishing her projects, she had a focus, a goal. She was doing something. But here, almost at the end? She can’t die now, she has things to do. When those things were done, though, what would she have to live for?

Jana berates herself for that chain of thought. Whether or not she wraps up her obligations and desires, her life will end either way. It’s the least she can do to make things easier on the people she’ll inevitably leave behind. Wishing for more time is futile, she knows, and she has to make use of what she has.

Still, she wants to dig her heels in, find some way to delay that inevitable end that her entire life revolves around. What can she do, though? Her body will give out when it gives out. When she pictures that happening, some point in the future, it seems peaceful, an acceptable ending. It feels as though she’s just realizing, yet again, that the point in the future she’s been preparing for might be now.

What if it _is_ now, asks half of her brain, and she wants to curl into a ball and sob. What if it _is_ now, asks the other half of her brain, and she thinks about her friends finding her body stained with tears, makeup running, room a mess.

What if it _isn’t_ now, she tries to ask, but she knows that she could die at any time. Even if what’s wrong with her lungs isn’t lethal, people are fragile and there are so many things that can kill her. There is no way to know, and because there’s no way to know, she has to always be prepared for the worst. The time she isn’t prepared could so easily be the time that she needed to prepare, after all.

-

Jana has finished her art. Her room is tidy, her belongings are in order. Not so clean as to look like she’d planned for her death – she doesn’t want anyone thinking about how afraid she might have felt if they think she knew her death was coming – but clean enough that it should be relatively easy to deal with. Nothing buried under random items to suddenly spark memories that would have, under other circumstances, been happy.

When she’d finished, she had decided to go for a walk in a nearby park, and she’s there now, walking. Waiting. She wishes, just a little, that she’d dropped dead the second she’d finished up in her dorm. That her death had already happened. Either that, or that her death could be guaranteed to be way off in the future, so far away that she’d never have to think about it. Anything besides the spectre looming over her every moment, constantly reminding her of how this could be the moment that she’d prepared for, that she’d dreaded, that she’d always known would come.

Everything sounds muffled, and she’s not sure whether it’s stress and worry, or some new sign of her coming end. Her raised heartbeat could go either way as well. Maybe they’re both. Stress can have negative effects of health, after all.

She sighs, and sits down on a bench. It’s peaceful, sitting there, with the world continuing on around her. If this is how being dead would be, she thinks, then maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. She tries to think about her own death like that – peaceful, calm, maybe even enjoyable – but she still can’t do it. It would be so helpful, with her own death so inevitable, to just accept it, but some part of her still balks.

What would it take, for her to be happy? Happiness feels like a lie, when everything is guaranteed to end so badly. So many people around her are smiling, but she can’t help but feel like they’re just acting, like they all think it’s what they’re supposed to do. Either that, or they simply haven’t realized how everything would go wrong, no matter what they did, in the end. All she can do is to try and mitigate the consequences of her own end, so that those around her can have slightly less terrible paths to their own ends. She hopes they haven’t realized that everything will end terribly. She wants them to be happy.

They aren’t prepared for their own deaths, she knows. She doesn’t think she blames them. It hurts, to consider how simply everything can end. It’s a hurt she has to deal with, though, if she wants to spare other people what hurt she can.

It’s worth it, if she’s getting hurt for them. She doesn’t want to die – she desperately, _desperately_ doesn’t want to die – but, as she always reminds herself, she’s _going_ to, and at least this way she can make things better than they might have been.

Despite that thought, that fragment of hope she manages to cobble together, she still can’t bring herself to head back to her dorm. Back to the carefully tidied belongings, the finished pieces of art, the room that feels like it belongs to someone who’s already gone. It feels like a grave, like a place of mourning. Like she’s overstayed her welcome, and she was supposed to be gone already.

“Jana!” someone calls over the general noise of people moving through their lives. “Hey, Jana!”

Jana looks up to see Mackenzie half-jogging towards her.

“I was just thinking about you!” Mackenzie continues. “Because, because you can’t come hang out next week – ugh, _exams_ – and I feel like we haven’t spoken in _ages!_ And it was really sad! And so I’ve been looking at my schedule, to figure out when I’m free, and I’ve got it all written out, and I was wondering if I could check it against your schedule? I mean, I’d totally get if you don’t have everything written out so far in advance as I do, because I got _super_ distracted, like, a week ago and went through all my syllabi and everything and so I have this very nice looking calendar for like two months out now but I didn’t before then so if you don’t that would make sense and- ”

Mackenzie pauses to breathe, and looks more closely at Jana. Jana tries to plaster a smile on her face as if anything in her life were good enough to outweigh what is coming, but she suspects that she fails with how Mackenzie’s expression changes to one of thought.

“You okay, Jana?” Mackenzie asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jana replies on muscle memory, not even needing to think. “I’m just worn out. I wish my teachers would just stop assigning things, for a week.”

“Mm,” Mackenzie agrees, sitting next to her. “Imagine: two weeks.”

“Maybe they could just stop assigning work for the quarter.”

Mackenzie doesn’t ask about how Jana is doing a second time. Jana’s good at coming up with excuses. She has a lot of practice.

-

Back in her preemptively abandoned dorm, surrounded by belongs mourning a person who’s supposedly still alive, Jana keeps remembering telling Mackenzie that she was fine. There’s nothing Mackenzie would have been able to do, she reminds herself again, but she can’t escape the desire to reach out, to find someone else to solve her problems. To hope that someone else would hold the magic solution, and that she wouldn’t have to think about any of this ever again.

It’s _stupid_ and _childish_ and _selfish,_ is what it is. To take her problems and dump them on someone else who has their own problems. To demand that they put down whatever is troubling them and instead help her face a reality that she’s to cowardly to. Mackenzie can’t do anything to solve the problem. At best, telling Mackenzie would achieve nothing. More likely, though, she’d just make her best friend feel bad about how little she can help and how bad Jana feels. What’s the point in calling attention to how she’s drowning if there’s no way to pull her out of the pool?

She’s already doing everything she can. What would she even say? Actually, I feel like shit constantly because in all likelihoods I’m about to die, and I don’t want to die but I don’t want to be alive either? Sorry for bringing this to your attention because now you’ll think about this every time I bow out of something we were going to do with our friends and decide between going and feeling guilty about how bad I feel or staying with me and feeling shitty because of my permanently bad mood? Have fun with your increased awareness of my limited lifespan and all the ways I could die?

No. There’s no way she could do that to Mackenzie. All that, for a moment of understanding? Absolutely not. Jana wishes deciding against something could make you stop wanting it.

-

What if she just… didn’t say everything? What if she admitted to something, like having trouble with optimism, but didn’t say the other parts, the ones that would do nothing but hurt? Mackenzie would try to reassure her about how the future might be bright, and maybe Jana would be able to lie to herself, for a minute. Ignore whatever is wrong with her body, ignore all the things that could kill her if this doesn’t. Ignore the fact that she will die eventually. Maybe Mackenzie would be able to convince her that things could be good, for a second.

What about when she remembers, though? When the beautiful lie breaks, and she remembers that there’s _no_ real escape, that _nothing_ can stop that? What if that pain is even _worse?_

Jana notices that one of the papers that were supposed to be on her desk is on the floor. It must have blown off when she walked by. She picks it up and sets it where it belongs, and the room goes back to its mourning.

-

Jana talks to Mackenzie.

Telling the truth feels nice, she finds. She feels like she’s putting down a weight. She’s too tired to even worry about how rude it might be to ask her friend to hold that weight for her, and it’s so easy to just keep going, to put down more weight, to say more than she’d meant, and-

And she’s sobbing into Mackenzie’s lap about how she’s going to die and her lungs keep feeling worse and-

And Mackenzie tries to reassure her, talking about doctors and odds and treatments and-

And that doesn’t _help,_ because of _course_ it doesn’t, because that doesn’t _stop_ anything. Maybe the doctors can fix this, maybe there’s _nothing_ wrong, but that won’t do anything about everything _else_ that could kill her. Jana can’t stop them all, Mackenzie can’t stop them all, doctors can’t stop them all, _no one_ can stop them all and Jana’s going to _die._ And when she does? That will be it. She will be done.

And what if it hurts?

-

Mackenzie Does Not Like to talk about death. As, like, a rule. She hates it. It’s just, it’s just _there, lurking,_ looming over everything she does. If her chair breaks, she can fix the problem by either putting her chair back together or by getting a new chair or by improvising something else to sit on if she can’t afford a chair. If she doesn’t like her reflection, she can dye her hair or change her makeup or try a new style with her clothes. If her air mattress is leaking, she can patch it. Those things have _goals,_ have a place where she can look back and say that there was a problem, and now there Isn’t.

Someday, she and everyone she loves are going to die. That’s a whole bunch of problems rolled into one, and there’s _nothing_ she can _do._ So, she doesn’t think about it. She replaces the lead in her mechanical pencil and Does Not Think About Death. She shows someone how to change the tire on their car and Does Not Think About Death. She replaces the battery in the fire alarm and Does Not Think About Death. She does not know what age you’re supposed to write a will at. She hasn’t written one yet.

Death is, apparently, all Jana can think about. Mackenzie wants to grab her by the shoulders and ask what the fuck she’s thinking, to look at it dead on like that. Of course Jana’s a mess! She’s thinking about things she shouldn’t think about! Mackenzie wants to yell at her, to say something, do _something_ so that Jana realizes what she’s doing wrong. If Jana would just close her eyes, it wouldn’t be able to hurt her! She should just do what Mackenzie does, and look away every time it enters her vision. Death doesn’t hurt when Mackenzie doesn’t think about it.

This is what she hates – being presented with a problem with no solution. Jana is _sobbing,_ and she has no words that might make it better because there _isn’t_ a _solution._ She can’t protect Jana, she can’t stop everything from ending, all she can do is pretend that the current moment will never end, for every moment of her life, running scared from second to second as if refusing to acknowledge the spectres chasing her will stop them from existing.

What else is there to do but close her eyes, though? Sure, ignoring your problems isn’t a solution, but there _isn’t_ a solution. At least this way, she’s reducing the amount of pain she’s in. This way, she can be happy. Why doesn’t Jana see?

-

Mackenzie isn’t satisfied with the way she and Jana parted. Sure, Jana was smiling a little, and sure, Jana had said that she felt better, but she hadn’t fixed the problem. She can’t fix death, but she can help Jana, probably.

The only good thing to come from all of this is that now she knows Jana isn’t actually particularly busy. She calls ahead anyways, because she knows that there are times where talking to people just seems like the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person. Jana says she’s busy, and Mackenzie is wondering how much time is enough time to wait before calling again when Jana calls back, says she’s not busy, and asks Mackenzie to come over. Mackenzie is out the door before she finishes speaking.

-

Jana feels like she should feel worse, now. Her problems aren’t any less, and now she’s causing trouble for Mackenzie, too. She doesn’t. She’s too tired to feel worse.

-

Mackenzie has been doing a lot of thinking about death, lately. She can’t help it. If she averts her eyes, she’ll be leaving Jana on her own. Jana isn’t good at lying about anything other than whether or not her mental health is an on fire trash can. Lying to herself about death is out. Mackenzie wonders if there’s any way to be aware of death without being miserable all of the time. If there is one, wouldn’t Jana have found it? Then again, if there is one, maybe a new perspective could be what’s necessary?

There’s not going to be a way to stop being sad, she thinks. Nor does she think she’ll find a way to be okay with dying. Being okay with dying is… generally not great, anyway, so it’s fine that she won’t find that. She just wants Jana to be able to feel happy. Not even all the time! Just, sometimes. Some happiness.

She can’t handle it all of the time – while Jana was in the hospital was the worst, because it was so hard to escape into her own head – and sometimes she just has to tune it all out. But sometimes, sometimes she can look at it dead on, and ask herself what would make it all less bad.

Jana has admitted to being afraid of events her own death might set into motion – the ways she might hurt people even once she’s gone, when she can’t reach out and undo it. Mackenzie had almost cried with relief when Jana had said that, which led to a bit of an awkward conversation. She wasn’t able to help it, though. Finally, she’s found a way to help her friend.

If Jana dies before her, she can help. Anything out of context, anything she was unprepared for, she would know full well how little Jana would want to hurt her. She would know it was an accident. Jana won’t have to keep her room clean to spare anyone who might have to clean it once she’s dead, because she can trust Mackenzie to do it for her.

Mackenzie isn’t so afraid either. If Jana’s the one who dies first, Mackenzie knows that the fact that she’d be helping Jana even then will help with the grief. If Mackenzie dies first, she knows that she can trust Jana with whatever mess she’d surely leave in her wake. And, if that’s the case, Jana promised to find someone else to help her. Their deaths will come when they come, and they know that at that time, they won’t be leaving a disaster behind. They’ll be leaving people who are very dear to them behind, and everything else, but knowing that things will hold together helps.

The future is not such a looming figure, casting shadows on everything anymore. They know that they can conquer it when they get there. It will be hard, but they believe in each other, and they each believe in the other’s belief in themselves. That’s basically self confidence.

-

Jana and Mackenzie are sitting on the bench in the park when they realize that they aren’t afraid. The world… shifts. They haven’t gotten off the bench, but they’re also sitting on dark shapes on the ground, pulsing red. Above them are the leaves of a tree, and also a clear sky that resembles nothing more than an eye (several eyes? Many, many eyes? They wouldn’t be able to describe it, if asked).

Jana breaks the silence by laughing, incredulously. Mackenzie looks over at her. “I just,” she manages through her laughter, “the whole world was like, like, oh, you’re happy? You’re doing better? Gotta fix that!”

Mackenzie snickers. “You know what?”

“What?”

“Fuck that, actually. I’m going to be _happier._ Look how- look how _hard_ I can smile.”

With a snort, Jana pushes herself up off the bench to stand on the ground where the dark shapes are, beneath the sky that watches. “Wanna explore?”

“Alright,” Mackenzie responds, taking her hand.

-

The dark shapes, they find, reach out across the land, like roots. They see people walking along them, sometimes. While the people walk along the path created by the shape, they are also living their life as normal. Jana and Mackenzie can see the world they’re living in – the normal one – superimposed over the world they’ve found themselves in. It is relatively easy, they find, to step from one ground to the other, even if they’re always aware of both. They can’t talk to people in the freaky apocalypse world, but they can talk to people in the normal looking one. Trying to push people off the roots doesn’t work, and they’re not sure how to get people to step off on their own. They also aren’t sure that they should.

-

They run into a man who isn’t following anything in particular. He looks surprised to see them. They’re surprised to see him.

“You two are Jana and Mackenzie, then?” he asks. They both nod, hesitantly. “I’m… I suppose I’m the coroner. Feel free to leave, if you’d like. I suppose you’ve rather earned it.”

“Should we?” Jana asks back.

He blinks. “Well, I don’t suppose anywhere else is better, but it isn’t like anywhere is any worse, either. You may as well do as you like.”

“I feel like it’d be easier to make a decision if we knew what was going on,” Mackenzie says. “Do you know anything?”

“I know some,” the Coroner replies.

**Author's Note:**

> is whatever jana thinks is going to kill her actually going to kill her? Idk but something would eventually  
> me, a couple of years ago: this fictional depressed person is unrealistic because they admitted that they were doing badly. I would never be a burden on other people like that and im not even depressed or dealing with a bad self image or whatever. And you expect me to believe someone with actually bad mental health would do that?? suspension of disbelief broken  
> me, now, recovering and Actually barely depressed: buddy,,,


End file.
